The Cuban Crises 767coast. But the Cuban people failed to flock to their lines,
and soon Castro’s army pinned the invaders down and
forced them to surrender. Because American involve-
ment could not be disguised, the affair exposed the
United States to all the criticism that a straightforward
assault would have produced, without accomplishing
the overthrow of Castro. Worse, it made Kennedy
appear impulsive as well as unprincipled. Castro tight-
ened his connections with the Soviet Union.
In June, Kennedy met with Soviet Premier
Khrushchev in Vienna. Furious over the invasion of
Cuba, Khrushchev blustered about grabbing West
Berlin. In August, he abruptly closed the border
between East and West Berlin and erected the Berlin
wall—a barrier of concrete blocks and barbed wire
across the city to stop the flow of East Germans into
the noncommunist zone. At the same time, the
Soviets resumed nuclear testing. Khrushchev ordered
detonation of a series of gigantic hydrogen bombs,
including one with a power 3,000 times that of the
bomb that had devastated Hiroshima.
Kennedy followed suit: He announced plans to
build thousands of nuclear missiles, known as
Minutemen, capable of hitting targets on the other
side of the world. He expanded the space program,
vowing that an American would land on the moon
within ten years. The president called on Congress to
pass a large increase in military spending.
In secret, Kennedy also resolved to destroy
Castro. He ordered military leaders to plan for a full-
scale invasion of Cuba. (One of the training maneu-
vers was code-named ORTSAC—Castro spelled
backward.) He also instructed the CIA to undertake
“massive activity” against Castro’s regime. The CIA
devised Operation Mongoose, a plan to slip spies,
saboteurs, and assassins into Cuba. Although never
officially endorsed by the president, Mongoose oper-
ated under the oversight of Robert Kennedy. Its
attempts to assassinate Castro failed.
In 1962 Khrushchev precipitated the most dan-
gerous confrontation of the Cold War. To forestall
the anticipated American invasion of Cuba, he moved
tanks, heavy bombers, and 42,000 Soviet troops and
technicians to the island. His most fateful step was to
sneak several dozen guided nuclear missiles into the
country and prepare them for launching. The missiles
could have hit most of the eastern United States with
nuclear warheads.
On October 14 American spy planes spotted the
launching pads and missiles. The president faced a
dreadful decision. After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, he
could not again appear to back down to the commu-
nists. But if he invaded Cuba or bombed the Soviet
bases and missile sites, Khrushchev would likely seize
West Berlin or bomb U.S. missile sites in Turkey.
Either action might lead to a full-scale nuclear war
and millions of deaths.
On October 22 Kennedy addressed the nation
on television. The Soviet buildup was “a deliberately
provocative and unjustified change in the status
quo.” He ordered the American navy to stop and
search all vessels headed for Cuba and to turn back
any containing “offensive” weapons. Kennedy called
on Khrushchev to dismantle the missile bases and
remove from the island all weapons capable of strik-
ing the United States. Any Cuban-based nuclear
attack would result, he warned, in “a full retaliatory
response upon the Soviet Union.”
For days, while the world watched in horror,
Soviet ships steamed toward Cuba and work on the
missile launching pads continued. An American spy
plane was shot down over Cuba. Khrushchev sent a
desperate telegram, suggesting that he was near the
breaking point. Robert Kennedy and others engaged
in frantic negotiations through intermediaries. Then
Khrushchev backed down. He recalled the ships,“Ich bin ein Berliner” (I am a Berliner), Kennedy declared from a
balcony in West Berlin in June, 1961, and his words brought a roar of
approval from the West Berliners. Gesturing toward the Berlin wall,
he called it “the most obvious and vivid demonstration of the
failures of the Communist system.”